Greetings from gorgeous Edmonds, WA where I am again for the fantastic Write On the Sound annual conference which was my entree to this beautiful part of the country that invited me back earlier this year to write 30 chapters of this book.

30 chapters which I , due to my own naivete and stupidity, nearly lost. I had a mini meltdown when the first day we got here (yes I brought my darling husband this time) I realized I’d forgotten my password for the online site LitLift I’d used to write my book on, without backup (yes, I said stupid). Well, apparently LitLift exists out there with no one at the wheel. The password reset email they generated sent me to an error message and no one ever replied to my emails on their contact form–scary! I sat and sat and finally made a jab at a password that *might* have worked and voila I was in! Whew! My husband stuck his flash drive so fast in to my travel laptop and we got all of my words out of that site as fast as we could. Talk about dodging a bullet!

Oh and Litlift finally did get back to me–via another “undeliverable email” message. It’s kind of unconscionable to me that no one has deleted that site or their Facebook/Twitter pages or made a notice that it’s defunct. NO ONE is minding the store, obviously. And people are signing up, trusting them. Ugh! I’m just glad I got my words.

In celebration, I will share some that I just opened to randomly and read to my husband the day I found them. Hope you like them too:

Cindy and I became famous for our spontaneous road trips.  We would look at each other and almost simultaneously say “let’s go”.  We would jump in the car and head to another city to visit a friend in college or in some cases make more dramatic adventures like that one time to Rocky Point Mexico on an impulsive Spring break weekend. 
This trip was where I had the one and only foreshadowing of what was to come several years later.  It was the trip where Cindy went missing and scared the living shit out of me.
“Come on, we’re going to Rocky Point” she called excitedly that day.  “We’ll throw some stuff in the car, grab our sleeping bags, I have some food and we’ll play it by ear”.
As was often the case, this wasn’t a question or even an invitation.  It was a mandate–we’re going.  This was how things often went between us.  Maybe I was having a rough moment, stressed in college, going through a break up or she was just having an itch.  All I knew was she was driving and we were going.  She streamlined it to what I had to bring, told me what time she was picking me up and that was that.
I loved our road trips.  We had so much fun in the car.  We’d make mixed tapes for them and catch up.  Often it would start with “let’s obsess” once we hit the highway.
We were often going through something and with each other, could hash and rehash it to our heart’s content.  It was almost always about boys–a world we were collectively befuddled in and failing at usually.
“Why is it that I’m not so in to a guy, then as soon as I have sex with him, I’m suddenly caramelizing for him and he’s not in to me?”.
Cindy created nicknames for everything and everyone.
Caramels somehow became a derivative of the word “karma” which was used, inaccurately, for being attracted to someone.  “We have the karma” she’d say.
Then it turned to “I have caramels for him” which later became a verb “we were caramelizing, heavily” and on and on.
There was one road trip to LA where Cindy produced a tape recorder she’d borrowed from her work at the school system office.  She’d brought it home for a project then got a wild hair to bring it on our road trip to visit Buddha in Santa Monica. 
“I have a great idea for our trip” she said with a twinkle in her eye.  “We’re going to interview each other”.
She named this interview show, via cassette tape, “The Dan Rather Show”.
For some reason, she spoke this name in in a semi British pretentious accent so it came out “The Dahn Rahthah Show”.
“Welcome to the Dahn Rahthah Show.  Today’s guest will be….Oprah Winfrey!” and then she would interview me, using that five inch microphone tethered to the bulky cassette player while insisting I stay in character as Oprah Winfrey the whole time. Until she decided she was bored with Oprah and needed a new guest.
“Well, thank you for joining us Oprah.  Now on to our next guest on the topic of ‘fame in America’ we welcome…Madonna!” and on and on with her in character questions. 
She would stop the tape from time to time to listen to ourselves back as we laughed hysterically all the way across the boring desert to LA.  Everything was a game with her.
Oh how I miss that.  And how I wish I had those tapes. Even one of them.

I came here to this Conference the first time three years ago by myself. I’d never been to Seattle and it was such a magical trip, it took me five blog posts over on Two Innocents to write about it. I still feel the magic here but this time it gets doubled with my husband.  We’ve slept well and dreamed here, written, shared, eaten great food, drunk wine he carried from PA, stared and stared at the gorgeous Puget Sound. And he’s teaching me chess. I lose every single time but last night gave him a run for his money holding him off my King for over an hour. VICTORY!

Today we take a train–the Amtrak Empire Builder–in to Seattle just for the experience of riding the train. We’ll bring our travel chess set and drink coffee and see a movie at the famous Cinerama theatre and then ride back. Not a bad Monday at all.

Hope you all out there are enjoying your Fall. I’m energized again to finish the book and I have a plan for another Sabbatical this Fall–in another part of the country. I’m ready to take this story to the next level.

Stay tuned…